The Story of Blackrock Mountain [Warcraft Lore]

Hello everyone! Blizzard has announced a new
hearthstone adventure focused around blackrock mountain and one of you asked me if I could
tell the story behind the mountain. I thought this was a great idea since the area has played
a massive roll in several stories of warcraft so sit back, relax and I hope you’ll enjoy
the story. Lets begin with talking about the creation
of the mountain since it wasn’t always there. It was created by accident and the story behind
it is told within the war of three hammers, which took place around 230 years ago. Once
the 3 dwarven clans, bronzebeard, Wildhammer and Dark Iron they all lived in relative peace
within the mountains of Ironforge. They were are all ruled by one king, Modimus Anvilmar,
but a civil war erupted when their king passed away. All three clans tried to conquer each
other over dominance of Ironforge, but the victor was the Bronzebeard clan.

They banished
the other two clans to which the Wildhammers moved to build their new city of Grim Batol
while the Dark Iron Dwarves moved away to build their city called Thaurissan within
the Redridge Mountains. The city was named after their leader and for a time the clans
actually did pretty well for themselves but the dark iron dwarves were unable to swallow
their defeat. Their leader Thaurissan lead an assault upon Ironforge itself while his
sorceress wife Modgud lead the charge upon Grim Batol. They came very close to taking
the cities, but eventually both armies failed.

Thaurissan was able to retreat back to his
own city, but his wife lost her life at Grim Batol and from that moment on the place was cursed. The combined armies of Grim batol and Ironforge, Wildhammer and Bronzebeard clans, they combined their might and they were intent on taking out Thaurissan and the dark iron dwarves. Before they could reach them though tragedy struck, Thaurissan wanted to summon a supernatural minion that would ensure his victory over
the other clans, but instead he called upon the ancient powers sleeping beneath the world.
To his shock, and ultimately his doom, the creature that emerged was more terrible than
any nightmare he could have imagined. Ragnaros: "BY FIRE BE PURGED" Thaurissan accidently had summoned Ragnaros
the Firelord from the elemental plane. The force of him entering the world scorched the
land, shattered the Redirdge Mountains and created the raging volcano at the center of
the devastation, the mountain we now call blackrock mountain. The Dark Iron Dwarves
would be enslaved by the firelord while the wildhammer and bronzebeard dwarves returned
home. They saw the devastation and wanted nothing to do with that and upon returning home,
the wildhammers found out that killing Modgud had left an evil stain upon their fortress
which made it uninhabitable. The bronzebeard clan offered them a home within the borders
of ironforge, but the wildhammers decided to move to the Hinterlands where they would
build their city of Aerie Peak and create a bond with the local gryphons.

So at this point blackrock mountain and the
area as we see it around it was created and many dark iron dwarves, including their king
and the seven who helped him with his spell lost their lives. Those that survived were
enslaved to ragnaros but they still held their own king which eventually became Dagran Thaurissan
descendant from the original Thaurissan. The dark iron dwarves wouldn’t be the only
ones to create a home within the mountains since many years later the horde would invade
azeroth and they made blackrock mountain their main base of operations.

The hordes warchief
used to be Blackhand of the blackrock clan but his second in command called Orgrim Doomhammer had found out that blackhand was just a puppet of Gul’dan and that Gul’dan did not care about the Horde. All Gul’dan wanted was more power and he would use his people so
doomhammer did what had to be done, took out his warchief and took control of the Horde. As you might have already realised, Blackrock mountain and the blackrock clan share the same name, but this was just a coincidence.
The mountain was not named after the clan or vice versa, but the orcs did see this as
a good omen. When Orgrim spoke to his troops, rallied them before they would try to conquer
all of azeroth, the mountain started to rumble. It almost seemed to encourage them and again
they took this as a good sign. Unfortunately for the horde, even though the
signs were there, they would eventually lose the war even after enslaving the dragon aspect
Alexstraza and forcing her children to fight for them. In front of blackrock mountain
they made their final stand against the Alliance of Lordaeron and even though Doomhammer was
able to take out their leader Anduin Lothar, he himself was knocked out by Turalyon. The
orcs that surrendered were placed in interment camps and put to hard labor while the alliance
followed those that ran away all the way to the dark portal.

Rend and Maim Blackhand,
sons of former warchief Blackhand tried to make a stand against Turalyon, but they ran
away once they found out that the paladin had the upper hand. The alliance destroyed
the dark portal while Rend and Maim secretly returned to Blackrock Mountain and made it
their home. They welcomed any orc that was able to escape, they even liberated a few
orcs from interment camps and they called themselves the Dark Horde. Two years later, when the original horde returned
for their second invasion they didn’t come to conquer azeroth, all they wanted were a
few artifacts which they could use to open more portals to different worlds and try to
conquer those worlds. The death knight Teron’gor had found out that Rend was leading the orcs
that were left behind on azeroth and they still had the red dragons under their control.
They needed these dragons in order to accomplish their mission so Teron’gor requested Rend’s
aid and Rend flat out refused. He didn’t see any reason to help the Horde considering
that they were the ones who not only held their ground against the alliance but also
have grown over the years. This refusal came as a blow to Teron’gor, but thankfully not
all was lost. The black dragon aspect Deathwing wanted the orcs to bring his black dragon
eggs to Draenor and in exchange he would help the orc with their mission.

The deal was made
but Deathwing is a master planner and manipulator and he always had several little plans and
schemes going on at the same time. He charged his children Onyxia and Nefarian with different
tasks. Onyxia was send to infiltrate Stormwind and manipulate affairs form within while Nefarian
was send into blackrock mountain and turn the dark horde into allies. While there Neferian did not only bring the dark horde to his side, he also experimented on creating a whole new dragonflight combining all colors into one, the so called chromatic dragonflight. Now there were two factions fighting over
dominance within the mountain as we have the dwarves with Ragnaros on one side, Nefarian
with the dark horde on the other side and both of them were a great threat to Azeroth. This brings us to the events of classic World of Warcraft where we were send in to blackrock mountain to take care of business. Many different storylines took place within
this mountain and the area surrounding it, so I can’t go over every little detail but
I will talk about the major storylines.

First of all...the dark iron dwarfs and blackrock
depths. Even though they were enslaved to Ragnaros, they were still able to carry out
their own plans. The leader of the dwarfs, emperor Dagran Thaurissan had his people kidnap
the daughter of King Magni Bronzebeard and bring her back to their shadowforge City.
Moira Bronzebeard was an only child and although Magni loved his daughter, he never showed
her any respect. He had always wanted a son the rule the throne after him and he was disappointed
that Moira was not a male heir. When Moira arrived in Shadowforge City she was not treated
as just any regular prisoner, Dagran showed her respect, listened to her and despite claims
of Dagran using magic to get her on his side, in truth Moira fell in love, married Dagran
and became pregnant. Magni send adventurers into the depths to retrieve his daughter and
after batteling our way through the vast city, during the final encounter you actually had
the option to either kill Moira or keep her alive. Lorewise Moira was saved by the adventurers
and she would later return with a fiery rage in her heart.

She hated those that had killed
her beloved, she had given birth to his son and when her father was turned into a crystal
around the time of the cataclysm, Moira arrived to claim her rightful place as heir to the
throne. This eventually lead to the council of three hammers as we see it today in which
all 3 clans, Bronzebeard, Wildhammer and dark Iron, are represented by a leader. Moira is
working hard to prove that the dark iron dwarfs are a valuable asset to the alliance in order
to give her son a brighter future.

Moira: "In time, my son shall RULE the dark irons and perhaps all Ironforge as well." Time will tell if Moira remains loyal and who knows
what her son might do in the future when he finds out what adventurers did to his father... Moira and the dwarves weren't the only ones
affected by political games. Onyxia was send by deathwing to infiltrate stormwind and she
disguised herself as lady katrana prestor. From within she manipulated events which lead
to the stonemasons guild rioting in the streets, the death of Varian’s wife Tiffin, the creation
of the defias brotherhood and the kidnapping of Varian himself. Onyxia had the plan in
mind to split Varian in two, one weak willed Varian that she could manipulate from behind
the curtains and one strong willed Varian that she would simply kill and dispose of.
Despite her best efforts her plans were interrupted and the strong willed Varian managed to escape.
The weak willed one was later ransomed back to Stormwind and resumed leading the city,
but people noticed a change in their king.

He was affectionate towards lady Prestor and
Anduin had concerns so he asked people to investigate. In game this resulted in adventurers
going into blackrock depths and rescuing Marshal Reginald Windsor from his prison. Windsor
had discovered Prestors secret, that she was actually Onyxia in disguise but before he
could make his report, he was ambushed by a dark iron raiding party and imprisoned.
This lead to one of the most annoying escort quests in the history of the game, but eventually
they managed to liberate him and bring him back to the city where he exposed onyxia for
who she truly was only to lose his life to the blackdragon herself. Lorewise, things happened a little different. In the comics the honor of liberating and escorting him is given to the strong willed varian and his friends.
They were the ones who entered blackrock depths, who liberated the marshal, exposed Onyxia
and in response Onyxia killed the marshal and kidnapped Anduin to her lair. Both the
weak willed and the strong willed varian decided to work together in saving their son and in
their confrontation onyxia blasted them both restoring Varian to one single being.
Both in game and in the comics Onyxia was slain and they proudly presented her head
to the people by hanging it in the capital city.

This left her brother inside Blackwing Lair
together with the dark horde lead by Rend since his brother Maim had been killed in
a savage battle with the dark iron dwarfs. Neferian’s experiments on the different
flights drew attention and the red dragon Vaelastrasz, son of Alexstrasza, has sworn
to take down Nefarian. Back in the day in order to enter upper blackrock spire, you
had to get a ring which involved a pretty big and difficult questline. Vaelastrasz was
the one who helped you out with getting this ring and if you had this item with you during
the Rend encounter, then the image of Vaelastrasz would actually show up and help you out. Once
you were able to enter ubrs and only 1 person in the raid had to have the key then at the
end you could attune yourself to enter blackwing lair and take on nefarian himself.

During
the second encounter we see Vaelastrasz in his dragonform trying to take on Nefarian
all alone, but he’s no match for the blackdragons power. He gets corrupted himself, turned against
his former ally's and we’re forced to put him down. That was just one of the many enemies we had
to face within nefarians domain since he had several races working for him, several black
dragons guarding the lair and of course several chromatic dragons more then willing to take
us out. One by one they fell until the lord of blackrock himself was all that remained. Nefarian: "Let the games begin" Even the mighty nefarian was beaten and the
operations and experiments within blackwing lair were stopped.

The head of Nefarian, similar to his sister, it was taken back to the capital city, it was displayed for all the people to see that this mighty black dragon had fallen. With the black dragonflight and the dark horde
out of commission, we focused our attention on the threat summoned by the dark iron dwarfs. I know that this was not the way that they released the raids but it was more fluent for the story...Anyways..

. After a small attainment quest which required us to go into blackrock depths
and collect a core fragment, we were ready to teleport into the molte core. The hydraxian
waterlords, a faction of water elementals and sworn enemies of the armies of Ragnaros
helped us out with this task. Once enough reputation was earned they gave us Aqual quintessence
which was used to douse the runes within the molten core and allowed us to take on Majordomo
Executus. We were unable to kill Executus, but he was kind enough to awaken his lord and his lord was more than willing to finish the job.

The firelord had risen and armies of heroes
took on the flames and they actually managed to defeat him. They were unable to completely
destroy ragnaros since that would only be possible within his elemental plane, the so
called firelands. That didn’t happen until many years later, but for now the threats
within the blackrock mountain were taken care of... The armies of ragnaros and nefarian, dwarfs,
goblins, elementals, demons, dragons, orcs, trolls all of it were taken on and taken out.
It seemed like the story would end here, but there’s nothing like a little revamp and
some resurrection to reboot a story... The black dragon deathwing had spend his time
recovering in deepholm and he has come back to destroy the world. Displaying the heads
of his children might not have been best idea in the world, but thankfully he didn’t instantly
destroy us...instead he worked on more schemes and more plans. Nefarian was resurrected by
his father and took up residence within the blackrock mountain once more. This time deeper
in the mountain within the area known as blackwing descent.

During the raid we encounter several bosses.
You have the omnotron defense system which was created by the dark iron dwarves and taken
by nefarian for his own purposes. There is Magmaw, a beast summoned from the firelands
centuries ago by the dark iron dwarves. Chimaeron, a hideous experiment that needs to be killed.
Atramedes, another experiment gone wrong who has lost the ability to see and Maloriak...a
young human alchemist kidnapped by nefarian and fused with the corpse of a dragonspawn.
All of it quite interesting, but Neferian’s greatest achievement within this area is the
resurrection of his own sister. She together with her brother were the final encounter of the raid and by killing them, we prevented them from doing any more harm to the world... even though Nefarian’s
experiments would echo on and cause more trouble else where but this video focuses on the mountain
and there’s one mystery in the mountain that I want to talk about.
After the cataclysm revamp they’ve added new quests to blackrock depths and on the
alliance side we see a faction called Morgans militia. The militia has always been there
around the mountain, but now their leader shows up and they put you on the task of taking
out Emperor Dagran Thaurissan. I’m not entirely sure how this works with Moira’s storyline
considering she’s pissed that people killed her husband, but the messy lore continues.
When you turn in the quest they say: She may have lost her land and family when
Ragnaros tore this land asunder, but with the Dark Irons crippled we'll be able to safely
build a new kingdom of our own in the Burning Steppes. Not even the Firelord himself will
be able to breech the capital's walls! It says that Morgan has lost her land and
family when Ragnaros tore the land asunder but that event took place around 230 years
ago so something doesn’t add up.

There’s been a bit of speculation as to how she lived
so long and one theory is that Morgan is actually a black dragon but to me that seems unlikely. It's not impossible, it just seems unlikely.
A far more interesting theory is that she’s actually a ghost of the person that was blown
up during the formation of blackrock mountain, because the Redridge lands and all the area around it...it most likely had humans Inside of it and when the dwarfs summoned Ragnaros, all of it was destroyed and...it's not unreasonable to think that she was destroyed and blown up as the mountain was created. Truth be told though... blizzard probably didn’t
really pay attention to this specific storyline We also see that the king that we already killed during classic, he's back...so yeah there are many things that you can give a spin to it. if you want to, for all we know she found
a magical way to keep herself alive maybe she found the fountain of youth, maybe she is a dragon, maybe she is a ghost, you know...It's a fantasy story, who knows...but you can give a spin to it.

That mystery aside, the story is not yet complete.
With warlords of draenor the dark portal turned red and blackrock mountain recieved a few new
visitors. Warlord Zaela and some of her orcs made their way into upper blackrock spire
where they worked on their doomsday device which would destroy Stormwind. Heroes of both
the alliance and the horde went into the mountain once more and they were greeted with references from the past. Leeroy Jenkins, and for those that don’t know leeroy check the description, anyways leeroy is dead on the floor and adventurers can resurrect him to finally get him his devout shoulders. During the Commander Tharbek encounter we once again get help from a dragon, only
this time it’s the blue dragon Awbee. Back in the day, you could find Awbee as a
young dragon whelp who was kidnapped to be used in Nefarian’s experiment and tossed
out to be killed.We saved his life and now he returned to repay the favor. With taking out Zaela, we make sure that the
Iron Horde’s plans to destroy stormwind are prevented and with that we end the final
story of the mountain.

Like I mentioned before, there are a lot of storylines, a lot of events
that happened within the mountain and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to tell all of them.
I do hope that you got a better understanding of why this mountain is so important to the lore of warcraft and I truly hope that you enjoyed the stories. Thank you very much for watching everyone, I hope you'll have a great week! Subscribe if you like my videos and until next time guys....see ya!.

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